A history in seven parts about Rainsford Island in Boston Harbor from 1636 to 1920 by William A. McEvoy (a Belmont resident) and Robin Hazard Ray. Now barren and abandoned for a century, the history details the stark and often brutal existence of the island's former institutionalized inhabitants, mostly inmates of "a smallpox hospital, followed by city and state facilities warehouses, in essence for impoverished immigrants, violent criminals, drunkards, unwed mothers, and the insane. From 1895 to 1920, a reformatory for delinquent boys brought the islands institutional history to a close." Special attention is paid to the barely visible remnants of the island's cemetery, McEvoy has been lobbying city, state, and federal officials to memorialize the forgotten buried there. Some of the dead include veterans from the War of 1812 and members of the famous black Civil War regiment the Massachusetts 54th. *quoted from Boston Globe article here: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/03/08/metro/newton-veteran-documents-neglected-rainsford-island-graves-1700-bostons-unwanted/

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